Win the right deals, price them so they're worth delivering, and deliver what was sold.
Presales, practice incubation and project management all need two things: direction (clear goals, quality and targets) and velocity (the pace to get there). These playbooks and tools come from 19+ years of doing this work in enterprise technology services.
Open the pricing & margin calculator Read the playbooksPricing & Margin Calculator
Build a cost-up price for a time-and-materials or fixed-price engagement. It covers role-wise effort, contingency, overheads, discounts and payment-term financing cost. You get the price at your target margin, your walk-away floor, and how margin moves if effort overruns or the client pushes for a discount.
Use the calculator →Most margin is lost before the contract is signed
Weak qualification, optimistic estimates, unpriced assumptions and unmanaged discounts do more damage than most delivery problems. These notes focus on the decisions that protect quality and margin, written for presales engineers, solution architects, practice heads and delivery managers.
Playbooks
Presales Playbook
From lead qualification to a signed contract
Covers: Lead qualification, bid/no-bid, discovery, proposals and RFPs, contracts, cross-team coordination, handover
Read the playbook →Solution & Commercials Playbook
Architecture, estimation, pricing and margin
Covers: Solution architecture, estimation, assumptions, pricing models, margin analysis, deal reviews
Read the playbook →Practice Incubation Playbook
Building a capability clients will pay for
Covers: Proofs of concept, trainings, whitepapers, accelerators, tech talks, domain expertise
Read the playbook →Project Delivery Playbook
Keeping the promises presales made
Covers: Agile, DevOps, Waterfall, Hybrid and Scaled Agile, risk, stakeholders, reporting, compliance, onboarding and offboarding
Read the playbook →About the author
Neil Harwani is Founder Director of Harwani Systems OPC Private Limited, a boutique practice in enterprise AI, open source and digital transformation. His 19+ years in enterprise technology span PwC India, Liferay, Decimal Point Analytics, CIGNEX Datamatics, IBM, L&T Infotech, Wipro, Mphasis and Tech Mahindra, across presales, solution architecture, practice building and delivery. He has also taught part-time for 12+ years across 18+ institutions, and currently teaches at Narayana Business School and GTU.
eMasters in Data Science (IIT Gandhinagar) · M.Tech (BITS Pilani) · Life member of AIMA, OWASP and CSI · Member of IEEE